It was unintentional to begin with, noticed it, debated keeping it in, and finally decided ‘what the hey’. This is a rough and tumble discussion board, no wimples here. And I haven’t seen any inclinations toward censer-ing posts.

A couple days of torture and the threat of having your person molded into a puppet are extenuating circumstances. Not like they could leave her behind with the sisters under her influence, she is clearly evil as evil comes.

In D&D terms I’d still put Frigg on neutral (before and after). Payet would be a hell of a lot closer to evil after throwing those kids overboard.

bah..Payet never MEANT to kill anyone(who wasn’t a properly labeled Bad Guy)…not even the so-called berserker when he lost his temper. .it just didn’t occur to him they MIGHT get killed. Frigg, on the other hand, is all about the Chaotic neutral with evil tendancies.

See, i’d go the other way. Frigg is clearly chaotic good. Really chaotic good, to be fair, but she’s not out to kill anything that isn’t evil. (and you can’t say what she’s doing now is evil, even Paladins are allowed to smite those they know are in the opposing alignment). Everything else can be explained by the “chaotic” part.

Best, on the other hand, does things that reek of sociopathology. He’s neutral with evil tendencies, and one could easily see him going full evil under the right circumstances.

@Joe: Moral Event Horizon? Pfeh, I’ll never understand that concept, really. I will note that the one thing that Dungeons and Dragons 4.0 did right, in terms of the game, was remove the concept of alignment for all but those that truly dedicated themselves to the concept of alignment. The rest of humanity/elfmanity/whatevermanity are, as Firefly would put it, ‘just being folk.’ Frigg just got vengance for a long period of torture, and for the person planning to break her mind and turn her into a handpuppet. Can you honestly say you would do different after that? I know I’d sure make a nun-powered bonfire.

@chaotik: Payet isn’t deluded. The only reason that he keeps up the “promised hero” guise is that he is ultimately self-centered and it is a very useful tool for him to use to further his own interests. Did he deliberately try and kill those children? No. Would he have cared if they died? Also no.

Funny, that’s a part of 4.0 I hate. They didn’t really remove the alignment system, they just made it “This is much less accurate now and we can’t be bothered to fix it, so deal with it”. The main problem wasn’t the system, it was so many people having no idea how the system actually worked. But then, that’s sort of the problem/point too – some people fervently prefer the old system, some like the new. I prefer to be able to be specific about character’s alignments instead of having to shoehorn them into others that don’t fit right.

That said? Frigg is a SHINING example of Chaotic Neutral. Shining, textbook example. Particularly the free-spirited part, here – that fantastic setup leading to “Nah, no controlling orders of soldiers for me” and horrible burn-y death. Chaotic Neutral. And so gloriously so I could get misty eyed over it.

Also, @Joe – Not a moral event horizon. Just a creative, *unpleasant* coup de grace.

ehh, im gonna have to agree with kagato23 here. Frigg tends to show a outright hatred for evil. she may not be a shininig example of good, but what CG character is? Member when those trolls(or orcs) were enslaved? she was effing pissed.(or is going to be.. thats in the time skip isnt it?)

Where has Frigg shown an outright hatred of evil? Also most normal people do not care for evil, that doesn’t make them good necessarily. A chaotic neutral character could hate slavery as much as chaotic good. What defines the deference is what actions a person is willing to take and reasons why. I’m not sure if we have seen enough to make a judgement call on either way of her being Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good. What makes this a questionable action is how she gives a speech on how things could be changed and be better, but does not allow it to happen. It could be because she doesn’t think head nun can change, but she gives the nun hope that it can.

It is generally the case where anything Good or Evil is regarded as someone else’s problem until it directly hinders the self… and matters of Law are almost always a hindrance.

Naturally, there are personal quirks. Certain things that a person can hate or love regardless… but the greater context of such things is usually irrelevant. If a Chaotic Neutral character hates slavery, it doesn’t necessarily mean they give a toss about the slaves themselves in any given instance… It probably just reminds them of an unpleasant experience of their own.

The funny thing is… a Good character will generally kill someone just for being “Evil”. A Lawful character may kill someone for doing something illegal. But if a Chaotic Neutral character kills someone, it is almost always personal.

I prefer my evil priestess grilled to a nice medium rare. You’ve gotta make sure the flames kiss the fillets just so. Then you serve it up with a baked potato and a melange of peas and baby carrots, or perhaps some green beans or broccoli florets sauteed in garlic butter. Choosing the appropriate wine to accompany the meal is also important. The correct red can bring out the flavors of hickory smoke and damnation.

But you never, ever ask for burnsauce. Burnsauce is like A-1. If you use it, it shows you a gastronomical philistine, who doesn’t appreciate the inherent qualities of a good cut of meat.

I don’t know what you animate, but after the dastardly crime has been revealed by a group of inquisitive kids, and your tragic fate is known to the world, those animations ought to be worth quite a lot. That’s how the art world works, right?

As a crusader, Frigg indeed used the proper force to carry out this execution. Burning away the lies with the fires of truth and that rot. I suppose it remains to be seen if the remainder of the team isn’t too scared to work with her ever again. Perhaps they should also check around and see if Gravedust has a yardstick stuck in his head.

When i read ‘It remains to be seen, if the remainder of the team’
I actually thought you’d written the whole statement in Rhyming couplets, and had to go back and read the whole thing to see if you had..

Frigg so far is the only character I can’t attach a voice to. Any kind of voice, for a moment even. I’ve made up one for Byron, Dusty, Syr’Nj, Bandit wasn’t that hard… but Frigg I’m just reading and thinking ‘she ain’t a cutesy one’.
Does that say something about her writing or me?

Same here. I’ve basically been using Jennifer Hale’s ME2 voice, because she’s been in everything and it’s easy to mentally insert. For fun you could just pick one that doesn’t fit to a hilarious degree, like Wendy Hoopes’s interpretation of “Jane Lane” from Daria.

Hmm, voices for the characters? I don’t know if I mentally assign voice actors or not, since I generally am terrible at recognizing voices…but for Frigg, strangely, I *do* have a notion of what her voice would sound like.

Guilded Age is quickly becoming one of my favourite webcomics. Which is really surprising to me for two reason: I’m not a fan of any other T. Campbell’s writing, though I checked all of them out, and I’m already fairly established in what my favourite webcomics are and there hasn’t been much fluctuation in the past three years.

That said, I pointed today’s comic out to a large variety of people, and kept reading Frigg’s speech. The writing, the timing and the bad-assery is perfect. Just perfect.

To the authors: there is an underlying theme in a lot of literature – comics, novels, and short stories alike – that in order to show a female character truly beaten down (as close as Frigga ever was to that) that she must have sex forced on her as part of it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for avoiding that path. Frigga was brutalized, and that is terrible… but not in such a stereotypical way that can, in spite of itself, further the rape culture that so dominates too many parts of the world today.

That you make these strong women characters (thanks, Joss) and then give them struggles without needing to rely on that terrible crutch is only part of why this is now one of my favorite comics on the web.

Thanks a lot, SongCoyote. That means we’re accomplishing the goals we set out to fulfill!

I never really got that anyway. Isn’t a savage beating suffficent? Must one go full rape? It’s like… going that direction invalidates their ability to fight, or be seen as one of the strongest fighters because it renders the fight part meaningless by reduces them to their sexuality in yet another way.

Or in this case, another author would turn the wicked nuns into some sort of lesbian sex cult. Let’s… let’s just keep it at evil nuns who muscle their way into control.

Guilded Age does not claim ownership of any of the corporate branding that appears in this comic, nor does it claim any affiliation, partnership, or endorsement of any kind. They are used strictly as an artistic choice for the set dressing of the comic.